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The Dilemma of the Tardy Transcript: What Would You Do?
"Do-It-Yourself" Ethics: A Case to Ponder
Posted October 27, 2010
This post was co-authored by Sharon K. Anderson, PhD, who writes the Ethical Therapist blog.
Some people create ethical dilemmas for themselves, and some have ethical dilemmas thrust upon them.
It has long been known (and recently expressed by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers) that disasters are not caused by one big glaring problem, but by the confluence of several small factors, each of which wouldn't have caused the disaster. A similar point can be made about ethical violations. Most of them are not caused by psychopathic professors who start out wanting to exploit their students. Rather, it seems like most ethical problems result from small lapses, areas of ignorance, or circumstances that all come together in an unfortunate way.
Here's such a case for you to consider:
You are the director of a graduate program which accepts only 5 students a year. In fact, the program is so small that you constitute the entire admissions committee. Your colleagues are happy to have you make the admission decisions, as it saves them lots of work.
This year you are particularly proud of yourself—you started processing files within minutes of the deadline so applicants could get a quick decision. At the end of the process you believe you've made excellent decisions, and applicants heard a few days early about their acceptance into the program. You also feel good because four of your top people have already accepted your offer. You have two very good applicants on the waiting list, both of whom have told you that your program is their first choice. You're simply waiting for your fifth accepted applicant to make her decision.
One of the applicants, Sam, was a student in your department. A couple of your colleagues spoke highly of Sam and wanted you to accept him. Unfortunately, his application was incomplete—one of his transcripts from a previous school wasn't in by the deadline. Although he would not have been in the top five, he might well have been the first person on the waiting list.
One day, as you check your email, text messages, voicemail, and wooden mailbox to see if your fifth candidate has accepted your offer, you get a call from Sam. "I was wondering if you've made decisions about the graduate program?" he says.
"Yes, we have," you reply. (You say "we" because you want to share the responsibility for the rejection, even though when you contacted your top five applicants you said, "I'm happy to offer you a position in my program!") "I'm afraid you didn't make it. Your file was incomplete because of your transcript from State."
Sam quickly replies, "But I did get that transcript in! I hand-delivered it in a sealed envelope on the last day to the department secretary. She said she'd file it right away."
You hem and haw a little, express your regrets, say the usual thing—that there were lots of qualified candidates—and try to empathize with Sam's disappointment. Then you go into the files and check. You find the envelope from State, unopened, sitting in the file!
The transcript could have been put there after the deadline, in which case the secretary may be responsible for not filing it on time. It could have been put there before the deadline and you flat out missed it. The return address is smudged, and you simply might not have processed it as the missing transcript. A final possibility, although remote, is that you and your secretary did everything right, but the student actually brought in the transcript a day (or maybe an hour) late. You look at the transcript. His grades in Statistics and a couple other courses were pretty good.
The question is: What do you do?
Do you put Sam first on the waiting list, where he rightfully belongs? He apparently met the deadline, and you have an obligation to him. On the other hand, he shouldn't have waited until the last minute to get the transcript in. This is really Sam's fault; these administrative oversights happen and he should have guarded against that.
Of course, you also have some obligations to the two applicants on the waiting list. You've already told them where they were on the list (after all, you try to be honest in all your dealings with students). Can you put somebody ahead of them in the queue?
Another option is accepting Sam as a sixth graduate student. Maybe you could make a case for six students this year. However, the Department has made it clear that five is the absolute maximum.
A third option is not accepting Sam. In this case, do you tell Sam what happened? Do you apologize? What if you think that Sam could get angry enough to sue? A lawsuit probably wouldn't succeed (after all, the accepted and wait-listed students were qualified, and the differences among those students are very small). At the same time, a lawsuit would be a major headache, and if you don't contact Sam he just might go away (and get accepted into another program, or be so disillusioned that he forgets about graduate school, becomes a ski instructor, and spends the rest of his life bitter, frozen, but with a great tan and blond accents in his hair).
What other considerations are there? [Here's one of our favorite questions:] What facts of the case would have to be different for your decision to change? For example, does the ethnic background of any of the parties (Sam, the secretary, you, the other applicants) make a difference? What if you didn't particularly like Sam and/or your colleagues? Or, what if you liked them a lot?
As you ponder these options you wonder what to tell your colleagues who want to know why Sam wasn't accepted. What would you say to them?
Finally, what do you tell yourself?
As you reflect on this case, think about the factors that led to this big ethical problem. At what points might you have minimized the potential for harm done to Sam?
We'd be happy to hear your thoughts.
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Mitch Handelsman is a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Denver and the co-author (with Sharon Anderson) of Ethics for Psychotherapists and Counselors: A Proactive Approach . (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Picture credits:
"OOPS" from http://www.legaljuice.com/oops/
"Homer" from http://www.semsamurai.com/page/2/
